American Vertigo Reviewed from Lake Wobegone

Oh my! Much to my surprise Garrison Keillor offers a NYT review of Lévy’s survey of American life that is completely scathing. Makes me want to quaff a beer, scratch myself, swap my partner, and laugh huh huh huh huh like Beavis and Butthead.

In more than 300 pages, nobody tells a joke. Nobody does much work. Nobody sits and eats and enjoys their food. You’ve lived all your life in America, never attended a megachurch or a brothel, don’t own guns, are non-Amish, and it dawns on you that this is a book about the French. There’s no reason for it to exist in English, except as evidence that travel need not be broadening and one should be wary of books with Tocqueville in the title.